Death Song

During the last years of his life, McGrath found it extremely difficult--often impossible--to write. Still he continued to write new poems, enlarging his work-in-progress, Death song, knowing the book would be finished only upon his own death. He died September 20, 1990 following a long illness, leaving the manuscript in the hands of his editor, Sam Hamill. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

After a narrow escape, Bolt goes after the mobster who tried to blow him up As far as the record industry is concerned, Matteo DiPalma is a manager, a producer, and the hit-maker behind some of the decade’s biggest chart successes. To the federal government, he is a crucial link between drug-hungry musicians and the Rosetti crime family that keeps them supplied with heroin and cocaine. When federal agents nail DiPalma on a trafficking charge, John Bolt and six other cops go to California to escort him back east. The shotguns they carry aren’t to keep DiPalma from running, but to protect him from a Rosetti hit. The agents don’t count on death from above. The mafia helicopter appears too quickly for the cops to react. Bolt is just outside the blast radius when the grenade hits the roof, vaporizing DiPalma and his guards. When the smoke clears, Bolt is bloodied but not broken—and ready to even the score.

Out of the deserts of the Southwest rides a band of renegade Apaches. Led by the mysterious warrior and holy man, Juliano, they have fled the reservation in a last-gasp effort to unite with other bands of free Indians in a violent uprising against the hated white man. In a remote corner of Utah Territory, a small company of Mormon settlers crosses the canyon of the Colorado, blasting a treacherous road through a steep, narrow notch in the imposing sandstone cliff s. Sent by command of their prophet, they hope to befriend the Indians and establish a new settlement near the San Juan River. And hidden deep in the labyrinthine, red rock canyons lives a mysterious and ancient people who inhabit the graceful cliff dwellings of their long-dead ancestors. Three widely different cultures will collide in a whirlwind of violence and betrayal; Philo Hatch and his Mormon brethren, in search of their abducted children; Juliano and his followers, seeking a sacred treasure once spoken of in ancient tribal legends; and the Recordkeepers, an ancient indigenous tribe isolated for centuries in the twisting canyons of the southwestern desert, a people who only wish to preserve their dying way of life and the sacred records they were entrusted with in a distant age.

MCGARRITY/DEATH SONG

The Tucson Kid is sentenced to death when he's accused of murder after killing a man in a gunfight. He's bought out of his sentence by a woman who has a job for him. A bandit is holding something over her father, and she asks Tucson to infiltrate his gang to discover what it is. Tucson is pitted alone against the outlaws and must face the bandit chief in a battle to the death.

This much-needed book provides valuable insights into themes and genres in popular song in the period c. 1600-1900. In particular it is a study of popular ballads as they appeared on printed sheets and as they were recorded by folk song collectors. Vic Gammon displays his interest in the way song articulates aspects of popular mentality and he relates the discourse of the songs to social history. Gammon discusses the themes and narratives that run through genres of song material and how these are repeated and reworked through time. He argues that in spite of important social and economic changes, the period 1600-1850 had a significant cultural consistency and characteristic forms of popular musical and cultural expression. These only changed radically under the impact of industrialization and urbanization in the nineteenth century. The book will appeal to those interested in folk song, historical popular music (including church music), ballad literature, popular literature, popular culture, social history, anthropology and sociology.

A Song of Love and Death examines the art of opera with the same creative insight that Susan Sontag's On Photography brought to its medium. It is an eloquent inquiry into the meaning of our boldest art, its expression of human irrationality and its power to disturb and excite us.